choosethedrew

Equally, whether you consider a short connection is a great idea or not, it absolutely does not prevent the airline from selling it to you and countless others who may not have the benefit of experience with such a connection.

If airlines don't assume any responsibility in the case of immigration delays, why don't they simply cancel the remaining itinerary due to no-show?

1Aturnleft

Indeed. Which is why experience is always great to have. Lets not pretend this is a new concept by any means. For as long as I can remember you use common sense to mitigate the risk of misconnect by building in additional time. Just because the computer says its ok doesn't mean its sensible to do so.

In the same argument are you going to go after Google because its maps said it would take you 45 minutes to reach Heathrow but you didn't think to build in time for emergency roadworks, an accident, general congestion during the morning rush and you ended up missing your flight? At some point you have to accept responsibility for your own actions and just accept you could have done more to mitigate the risk.
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orbitmic

Because there are plenty of cases where airlines will consider you have an acceptable excuse to have missed your flight without it being « their » responsibility to have made you make it.

if you missed your connection because you lost your way in the airport (eg went to the wrong pier), airlines will typically accommodate you on the next available flight, but if that means a downgrade, you won’t be eligible to compensation. Similarly, where airlines have a « flat tire rule », it does not entail compensation if you have to be reaccommodated in a lower class.

in short:

1) you miss your flight because of the airline (eg delay, cancellation), they will protect your itinerary and pay compensation and/or difference if this cannot be in the same conditions as originally booked;

2) you miss your flight due to a cause which is not under the airline’s control but which they consider an acceptable excuse (either formally or informally), they will usually accommodate you the best they can but this won’t give you a right to compensation if this involves a downgrade;

3) you miss your flight due to a cause the airline deems unacceptable, you can try to plead your case but may lose everything.

this is straightforward case no2.

choosethedrew

I use ITA matrix and Flyertalk, so I am well versed in such risks. Am I the man on the Clapham omnibus re air tickets? Of course not. But even then, a 1h50 minute INT>DOM connection is not shown as 'risky' at JFK by Matrix. Nor does aa.com say 'this is a risky connection and you will likely be downgraded if you miss it through no fault of your own'. So, where is one meant to glean this common sense from, unless you have lived experience? Again, I am talking about Joe Public, not Flyertalkers.

A straw man unfortunately as I am not purchasing anything from Google in this example, let alone a premium service costing thousands of pounds.

Tobias-UK

If there are no same-day seats available what do you expect the airline to do? Boot others out of their seats to accommodate the misconnected pax?

orbitmic

Airlines have one risk threshold - MCT which defines what they consider is a big enough risk that it should not be allowed.

Are you suggesting that airlines should move from those two categories to three (authorised, authorised but heck we don’t really recommend it, disallowed) and that it would make things easier for passengers? if so what level of risk do you think should be included in that « medium » category because of course plenty of people do the 110 minutes connection without any issue.

If you accept the concept that risk is a sliding scale rather than a precipice, and know that there is such a thing as an MCT which is the risk level airlines consider acceptable, then basically the closer you are to that threshold, the greater the risk you might not make the connection. If MCT is 60 minutes, then presumably a 180 minutes connection gives you a lot of margin, a 65 minute one means there is still a significant risk something might go pear shaped.

As for asking how you are supposed to know of risk except from life experience, isn’t that the case of pretty much everything? I mean our parents and schools teach us, and there is such a thing as intuitive apprehension, but beyond that, don’t we all mostly learn from experience?

Life doesn’t come with universal disclaimers, not least because systematic disclaimers lead people to precisely ignore them. Look at how many people use their phones during take off or drive 10mph above the speed limit because they’ll tell you that they always do it and have never had an issue. At the same time, plenty of people have an accident when they were driving more than 10mph above the speed limit, and their consequences are also likely to be more severe than if they were driving slower. There is just no point formalising warnings about bookings close to McT because MCT will typically ensure - say - 90 or 95% success anyway so if you start explaining that 97% success is still not risk zero, you are just confusing people, not helping them.

dougzz

I think this is wrong, AA for example know, because I add my KTN to the booking, and then get TSA-Pre on any connecting boarding passes. Whether they use this information in any other way I've no idea, and I can't imagine they would offer connections based on access to optional services, it's just MCT I assume.

I can only endorse what others have said about GE, and the TSA-Pre that comes with it. I'm in LA at present, and cleared the border at JFK (Tier points, got to have those TP) in less than 3 minutes, it would have been sub two but I had to wait maybe 20 seconds for an officer to present the chit to. Once at BWI which is a fairly quiet airport anyway, I barely broke step, the GE kiosk ID'd me and printed the chit near instantly, OK it was probably 15 seconds but I'm telling the tale. I know it's a bit off topic, but if you visit the US just once a year, I reckon you get great value out of the £120 it costs, the only stumbling block being the interview, no idea what the situation is there currently. I did mine at Grosvenor Square a number of years back, when it came to time to renew I was allowed to do so without a further interview. On one visit to MCO as I ambled up the near deserted TSA-Pre lane, I looked at the out of sight regular queue and thought I'd have paid just to skip that one queue.

choosethedrew

On the day, there is very little that can be done if boarding passes have been generated. Obviously I am not advocating a UA-style removal of pax from seats! My observation is more of a systematic one in that, as explained below, paid F/J tickets get bumped off fairly early in the process to deal with the upgrade requests:

What would also help is US regulation dealing with downgrade compensation, which goes way over and above the current low levels of fare recalculation, especially if on a multi-sector advance purchase itinerary.

choosethedrew

Thanks, makes sense. I would say that if missing the flight due to being lost at the airport and missing the flight due to immigration are both in category 2 from your examples, then this feels unfair to me as there is a lot more that a passenger can do to not be lost in an airport than quickly get through an immigration queue.

orbitmic

I guess it depends? For instance, one may miss your flight due to immigration because the queue was super long... or due to an issue with the passenger's paperwork that could have been avoided and led them to secondary. And one may miss the flight due to getting lost in an airport because they did not pay attention... or because they got plenty of bad airport luck... think C gates arrival but with a bus gate, the occasional dodgy lift indications, the transit not arriving when it should or that kind of thing. To be honest, even as a seasoned traveller, I have taken the wrong turn more than once in airports that I am less familiar with, and many more times I have followed their directions only to find out that they were really counter-productive (e.g. Amsterdam when they were undergoing lots of internal work!)

And of course, not everyone has equal physical or linguistic abilities, so arguably, an elderly lady who does not speak English may well be harder hit by the getting lost at airport than by the immigration issues...

I think that the "common" ground between the two is that you are in the context of a connecting itinerary and the airline is happy that you wanted to make your connection and did your best so they will, in turn, try their best to help, but if, for any reason, they can't fully deliver they won't consider that they have to compensate you.

choosethedrew

No, not at all and apologies if that was what was coming across, that would be way too complex.

The point was that unless you have personal experience of a horror show US immigration then you would erroneously assume, based on the MCT and ticket sale by the airline, that such a connection is reasonably do-able. Now obviously things do go wrong as I do accept the airline cannot control everything, but when the proverbial hits the fan it stands to reason the airline would do you right in terms of not clearing its own upgrades way before you've had a chance to actually miss the flight or providing decent compensation. Basically, I'm saying the UK/EU system feels a lot fairer than the US one in this specific area.

choosethedrew

True, but these are outlying characteristics. Possible, but not probable. Whereas once you hit the hot mess of an immigration hall at a US airport, what exactly can anyone do, regardless of their characteristics? It's too late to apply for GE, you can't change your passport, there is no connections lane, you're basically forced to hustle and rely on goodwill which in a city like NY, might be in short supply I don't know whether the denizens of DFW are more positively disposed to Brits - I'm assuming US passport holders are spared this pain somewhat - but my argument is that the system is making the individual have to resort to such tactics and it shouldn't be like this if there was a more equitable compensation / reaccom scheme in force.

orbitmic

I would say that most of the time, the connection is reasonably do-able. Indeed, I have managed tons of them (and I don't have global entry). But as you say, sometimes errr... none of the stars are aligned!

I totally agree with you that the EU/UK systems work better in general, but on that specific case, I do not believe that compensation would be paid (if, for instance, this was about arrival into the UK, one of those days of massive immigration mess and there have been a few, domestic connection but C is full and you are basically told that if you want to fly on that last flight of the day it will be in Y). To me the big difference is that because US airlines upgrade ad libitum, it happens far, far more often that you will have the F cabin full (the flip side is that AA will typically let you go on an earlier flight than the one you booked if you cleared immigration very fast, but in my experience, that often means being told "Y only" too (and for that reason, I will typically not take up the offer!)

orbitmic

Oh, I totally agree with you. In fairness, there are many airports were they will hand out those "short connection" cards that enable you to skip some of the queue but it doesn't always work. I have had horrible experiences at MIA in particular and all the "good will" I got when politely asking: "I'm sorry but I have a connecting flight leaving in 30 minutes - is there anything at all for people likely to miss their flight?" was to get copiously insulted by the hall/queue agent. Nice.

I can sort of understand the risk for Intl-Dom connections, but to me it gets even more absurd on Intl-Intl ones where the US annoyingly insists on your clearing immigration and customs to enter a country... you don't want to enter in the first place! (at least not "this" time I mean...) And of course, that adds further pressure on immigration and in turn adds the risk of hellish queues and people being affected by what we are seeing here.

Geordie405

A lot of DOM - DOM connections are just as bad for MCT. PHX is notorious for its 25 minute MCT when flying AA. That's fine if you're arriving and departing from the same pier but if you're at opposite ends of the terminal all you need is a 5 minute delay and all bets are off. I routinely choose not to book those ultra short connections at PHX as the risk of misconnecting is just too great.

I don't recall seeing the orange Express Connections cards in a long time, but that may be just as much COVID related as anything else. I mean that in the sense that with so few international flights operating and passenger numbers down there wasn't the need for them.

Certainly having to clear immigration and enter the US when you're really only transiting doesn't help the situation as you rightly say. Global Entry is a big help when it comes to immigration but only if everyone in the party / family has it.

How CBP is set up at an airport is also relevant. For example, at LAS both US Citizens (my wife) and Legal Permanent Residents (me) can use the same line. At MIA it was set up so that I had to use the "Visitors" line. If my wife and I wanted to clear immigration together (which we try and do) then she had to use the "Visitors" line too. In the end I used Global Entry and she used the US Citizens line. There were no automatic passport machines so that wasn't an option. Prior to coming back to the US through MIA my previous three experiences of immigration over the last six months had all been positive. At Dallas there were no queues at all. Ditto at Las Vegas, but the BA275 is the only international arrival at that time and being in Club usually means you're close to the front when you get to immigration anyway. MIA reminded me of the bad old days at LAX where you could queue for what felt like hours, but that was pre-ESTA as well where you had the green VWP form as well as the blue Customs form. The whole "Simplified Arrivals" process where immigration and customs is combined is a definite improvement.

At the end of the day immigration in the USA can still be hit and miss. AA will certainly do its best to get you to your destination but it can be a choice between same day in coach, or at a later date in your booked cabin. That said, it's not purely an AA or US problem. Our last trip back to the UK saw us with the absolute minimum of 60 minutes between our flight in from the USA and our flight up to NCL. With only two flights a day between LHR and NCL at the time we didn't really have a lot of choice. However, a remote stand, delays with the buses, no e-gates and queues at immigration at T5 led to a frantic dash through the airport. We made our flight, only for it to be delayed because of the dozens of other passengers who were in the same boat as we were. I think we finally got our breath back as we were flying over St. Mary's lighthouse on the approach to Newcastle!